14 DAY TRIAL // Pixelmator, the cheap alternative to Photoshop on OS X, has been having some issues as of late. The app crashes and even causes Macs to restart on systems running OS X 10.8.2, but the development team behind the popular photo editing app insists that NVIDIA is to blame.
Apparently the issues started to emerge right after Apple released OS X 10.8.2 with a new set of graphics drivers that seemingly hinder Pixelmator’s GPU-intensive processes.
The team explains that, “A month or so ago, after the most recent OS X update (10.8.2), we’ve bumped into a problem that causes certain Macs to restart when intensively using Pixelmator.”
“Sometimes, the app would stop responding without restarting a computer, or just cause some graphical glitches,” says the company.
“We did everything to find the root cause of the problem. We’ve researched a vast amount of information about OS X internals.”
“We’ve torn down our Macs. We even reached out to Apple. Finally, the picture was clear: It’s an issue with Nvidia Geforce graphics card drivers,” the Pixelmator Team writes.
The company clarifies that “the issue isn’t with Pixelmator,” adding that they’ve been working with Apple on a fix.
“Good thing, though—the guys at Apple are very helpful, and as soon as we hear about a solution, we’ll let you know about it that very moment,” says the team.
The affected NVIDIA GeForce graphics cards are GT 120, GT 320M, GT 330M, 9400M, and GT 9600. If your Mac has one of them, stay put, a fix is on the way.
The Pixelmator team also promises to brighten up the holiday spirit with a new release soon “that comes with tons of quality improvements.”
It isn’t clear whether this new release will also deliver the much needed patch for the NVIDIA issues. Apple is also testing OS X 10.8.3 internally, so it’s fairly possible that all bugs will be ironed out when the Mac maker decides to release it publicly.